My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14

An explanation: My students used to memorize ten words I assigned to them every week, taking a quiz over those ten words every Friday. It was a pretty lower-level-of-Bloom’s-taxonomy expectation from me, and I knew in my heart I could do much better helping my students discover a genuine interest in the vocabulary words they encountered on their own, rather than ones I had decided they needed to learn—or memorize—that week.

For the past four years, I’ve been developing a new, Common Core-friendly technique that has completely shifted my vocabulary expectations to the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. I now turn my students into “Vocabulary Collectors,” an idea that was inspired by two awesome children’s books I always display in class; both are pictured above.

The Boy Who Loved Words (Roni Schotter) and Max’s Words (Kate Banks) are both about young people who “collect” new vocabulary words.

How It Works: Adding 4 Weekly Words to the CollectionHow’s it work? Every Friday—come rain, come shine—my students submit (or “publish”) four new words for their personal vocabulary collections, which are stored in our classroom binders after they have been shared and discussed in class and after they have been graded by me.

75% of my students’ “collected” words must come from the class novel we are reading, or if we are between class novels, from an independent novel or--and I added this new rule just this year-- from an approved non-fiction magazine article they read on their own.

My students’ fourth word each week is called their “free word,” and it can come from any source they choose, as long as they cite where it was found or heard. Most of my students—like 8th grader Josh here who was reading The Jungle, our class novel for November and December—submit all four words from the assigned reading. I do, however, have a small group of students who simply love finding a weekly “free word” to impress their friends with.

What do they write? I have created ten short-but-thoughtful writing activities over these four years that students can choose from as they decide how to “display” their words in their collections and prove to me they understand how and when you would use the word in a variety of contexts.

Each week, students must use four different activities from the list of ten.

I purposely designed some of the activities to focus on creative writing, some to focus on logical writing, and some to focus on both.

Sixth grader Dontae—who was reading an independent novel called The Darkest Path—took great care to not only to display his words, but also to make sure the short piece of writing for each word was as perfect as possible. The writing is what I score them on.

How It Works: Adding 4 Weekly Words to the Collection

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14My students, being naturally competitive, try to outshine each other. I motivate their competitive nature by offering a weekly “Vocabulary Collector of the Week” extra credit award. Weekly winners (one from each grade level I teach) are photographed and posted on Pinterest, which really excites my kids. They also earn five extra credit points and any prize from my extra credit bucket, which I stock with stickers and glittery pencils and stuff.

For the second year in a row now, we have also had a “Vocabulary Collector of the Year” competition. Students publish a final set of eight new vocabulary words as part of their final exam for me. I give a “Vocabulary Warrior” patch to the 10 students who have the absolute best activity for the 10 writing tasks they are allowed to use. On the next ten slides, I am pleased to share with you the 2013-2014 school year’s winners of the acclaimed “Vocabulary Warrior” patch; these patches, by the way, are Boy Scout patrol patches, and most of the kids display them proudly in their writer’s notebooks.

I hope you enjoy this year’s ten winners! They are truly awesome, and I will be using them as exemplars next year when I am teaching my new students the ten different vocabulary options available to them.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our first winner is…

8th grader Irene was nominated by her peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Personified Vocab Word for the word atrocious, which she discovered in I Have Lived 1000 Years, which is a book we use in our World War literature circle unit.

I have created a PowerPoint lesson for all ten of my vocabulary/writing activities. The “Personified Vocabulary Word” lesson is one of two lessons I offer freely at my website.

Click here to have free access to this PowerPoint (saved in PDF format) I created, which includes an Emily Dickinson poetry interpretation lesson as it teaches students to personify vocabulary words.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our second winner is…

6thth grader Chris S. was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this haiku for the word choleric, a word he discovered in Travels with Charley, one of the two non-fiction books my sixth graders read with me.

Vocabulary Haikus require my writers to find a specific context in nature where their chosen word makes sense to use. I unfortunately don’t offer this vocabulary & writing lesson freely (it’s a ready-to-use 19-slide PowerPoint lesson). If you visit this link, however, you will learn how to order all ten of my vocabulary/writing lessons for a very reasonable price.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our third winner is…

8th grader Amanda was nominated by her peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this IMP-INT-EXC sentence collection for the word lethargic, which she discovered in I Have Lived 1000 Years by Livia Bitton Jackson.

Many of my ten vocabulary/writing lessons focus on teaching grammatical concepts, and this is one of them. I have created a PowerPoint lesson for all ten of my vocabulary/writing activities. The “IMP-INT-EXC Sentences” lesson is the second lesson I offer freely from my website. Click here to gain access to this free lesson in PDF format.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our fourth winner is…

7th grader Chris D. was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Mr. Stick Vocabulary Cartoon for the word almsgiver, which he discovered in Steinbeck’s The Pearl.

If you know my website at all, you know I love challenging my non-artists with Mr. Stick because so many of my students are visual learners, and you don’t have to be an artist to visually represent the idea of ideas or vocabulary words. Students are required to perfectly punctuate vocab cartoons, which Chris did a great job with here. I also was impressed by his use of the computer to draw Mr. Stick; most students sketch him by hand. My vocabulary/writing package comes with an entire Mr. Stick vocab lesson.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our fifth winner is…

8th grader Hannah was nominated by her peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Related-Words List for the word convalesce, which she discovered in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

I no longer teach Greek/Latin roots through rote memorization; instead, I do hallway publishing projects—like this one—and I challenge students to investigate the Greek & Latin roots in self-discovered vocabulary words they find in books, and then look up.

My 25-slide PowerPoint lesson on this vocabulary/writing option comes with a passage about King Arthur (by Sir James Knowles) for them to analyze. This ready-to-go lesson comes with my Vocabulary/Writing Package of resources available at my website.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our sixth winner is…

7th grader Ethan was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Illustrated Sausage Sentence for the word vindictive, which he discovered in The Pearl.

My brain does really interesting things with words, and I am truly proud of any 100% original idea I feature at my website. An Illustrated Sausage Sentence is an idea that I invented; it’s pretty challenging to make one, however, but that’s why I am a good instructor with differentiated instruction. I create true challenges for those ready for such a challenge. Ethan took the challenge seriously, and this is a truly great example of a vocabulary sausage sentence.

My 10-slide PowerPoint lesson on this original idea of mine has students analyze a Cole Porter song. The lesson is included in my complete Vocabulary/Writing Package.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our seventh winner is…

8th grader Nate was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Decorated Synonym & Antonym List for the word lethargic, which he also found in I Have Lived 1000 Years.

I teach parts of speech and grammar pretty well, and I use this vocabulary/writing activity to solidify my students’ understanding of the different parts of speech. My students’ synonyms and antonyms must 100% match the original vocabulary word’s part of speech, and that proves pretty tough when you’re dealing with harder vocabulary words. I grade these lists harder than any of the othervocabulary/writing activities available to students.

My synonym/antonym lesson is included in my complete Vocabulary/Writing Package.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our eighth winner is…

8th grader Matt was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Symbolic Representation for the word impetus, which he found in A Farewell to Arms.

Creating an original metaphor absolutely requires higher level thinking skills, and I encourage it in a variety of ways; for example, I used to host a Metaphor of the Week competition, but the metaphors started becoming repetitive, so I transformed that contest into this vocabulary and writing activity, which the students really like. I require a visual to accompany the symbolic representation or metaphor they create.

My symbolic representation and vocabulary /writing lesson is included with my complete Vocabulary/Writing Package. It includes an activity where students analyze Steinbeck.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our ninth winner is…

7th grader Tyler was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this Showing Sentence for the word epaulet, which he found in The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.

Of the eight parts of speech, I think that verbs are the most important for students to “master,” and my kids come to me often unable to even find verbs in their own sentences. My Showing Sentence Vocab activity requires students to not only craft (and punctuate) a descriptive sentence with context clues, but it also requires them to identify their verbs precisely.

My showing sentence vocabulary lesson is included with my complete Vocabulary/Writing Package. It’s a 31-slide PowerPoint lesson that focuses on learning about the power of verbs.

My Vocabulary-Collecting Winners!—2013-14And our tenth winner is…

8th grader Bill was nominated by his peers and ended up winning a Vocabulary Warrior patch for this E.G.O.T Sentence for the word intermittent, which he found in Reporting WWII, some non-fiction he found on his own after reading a novel about the World War 2.

E.G.O.T.’s—I am proud to say—are totally an original idea I came up with because I love inventing word games. They are fairly challenging to find, but when you do find one and understand in grammatically, you can learn four new vocabulary words for the price of one.

My Vocabulary/Writing Package comes with a ready-to-go nineteen-slide PowerPoint lesson that teaches students to seek out possible E.G.O.T.s when they encounter new vocabulary words for their vocabulary collections.

Have I piqued your interest in trying out a new vocabulary routine next school year?

After four enjoyable years of further development and revision, my weekly vocabulary routine has become my best-ever way for teaching mini-lessons on both quality writing and accurate grammatical, punctuation, and spelling skills. As I hope the samples in this PowerPoint have displayed, my students do learn to create thoughtful and accurate pieces of small writing that are focused on using harder words from our classroom reading tasks.

Especially during these last two years, I have become a true believer that small, regular writing samples from students are valid indicators for assessing writing, language, spelling, and punctuation skills, just as valid as the lengthy essays, narratives, arguments, and other formal writing assignments that are assigned. We absolutely do still work on the big writing assignments too; we have a formal paper due every six weeks or so from my classes. The trick is learning a balance: I have now balanced our weekly vocabulary/writing routines with my writer’s workshop expectations, and everyone’s writing skills have improved in both areas.

Need more to look over and think about? My vocabulary page at my website freely offers many additional resources that assist my kids: http://corbettharrison.com/Vocabulary.htm

Ready to order? At the end of the 2014 summer, once all new updates have been sent to my customers who bought last year, the price for my ten vocabulary lessons will go up by $2.50. If you’re ready to order, visit this link: http://corbettharrison.com/products.html#vocab